Our Tools Are Pretty Great

Do you treat your memory cards, as I do, like they are nearly indestructible? My storage system does include a card wallet, but only for organizational purposes. I regularly store cards in my actual "wallet" wallet, as well as the jeans pocket of my pants adjacent to my car keys or my cell phone—depending on whether or not a card has been shot. I know, it’s weird. But still, the point is that I don’t exactly treat them with kid gloves. And that’s okay. Turns out we all do this. It’s one of the benefits of living in the digital era. Our "film" no longer has to be handled as carefully as it did back in the bad old days. Take, for instance, this tongue in cheek bit of satire from The Online Photographer. It’s a list of do’s and don’ts for the proper handling of memory cards that includes not changing cards in direct sunlight and storing unused cards in the freezer. Goodness, can you even remember the lengths to which we once had to go in order to make good pictures? If you’re unfortunate enough to be too young to remember those days, you may not enjoy this bit of satire as much as the rest of us. But either way, trust me: it’s good to be a digital photographer. We don’t even have to put our hands in chemistry any more. You definitely won’t find me complaining about that. Today’s tools are pretty darn great.